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New submitter hugeinc sends this quote from an article by author Andrew Kessler:
"Next week, while we're all watching NBC, a nuclear-powered, MINI-Cooper-sized super rover will land on Mars. We accurately guided this monster from 200 million miles away (that's 7.6 million marathons). It requires better accuracy than an Olympic golfer teeing off in London and hitting a hole-in-one in Auckland, New Zealand. It will use a laser to blast rocks, a chemical nose to sniff out the potential for life, and hundreds of other feats of near-magic. Will these discoveries lead us down a path to confirming life on other planets? Wouldn't that be a good story that might make people care about science?"

they're athletes, of course they're in shape (okay, some athletes and/or some sports are an exception).Minimal clothing is appropriate for exercising in the heat. Tight clothing won't get in the way (whether other players or inanimate objects on the field of play)/

The brain is very, very good at determining positive physical traits, and labels them accordingly as attractive.

Nonesene, it's largely driven by fashion. Being anorexic, which many girls aspire to, is not healthy. Marilyn Monroe was somewhat chunky by modern standards. Go back a few centuries and fat chicks were teh hotness.

He can't think and you can't reason. The mode right now is to be unhealthily skinny. The mode in the past has been to be chunkier, mostly because it proved you could afford to eat well. If we have another full-fledged depression (and I think we're heading there at full power, as opposed to full steam ahead... progress!) then you'll see it happen again.

It usually depends on what is "easy" - when food was expensive and harder to get, being fat meant you were rich and special. Today the cheapest food is the most unhealthy crap that makes you fat.

Just like once most people were outside working in the fields etc, and they all got suntanned - so the in thing was to be as pale as possible. That showed you were rich and powerful, because you could stay inside and didn't have to work.Today most people have to work inside, in their small offices and thus are very pale. So being tanned means you have time to be outside.

What's so odd about it? Deer, antelope, etc. show off by wasting energy doing dramatic vertical leaps when the herd is running from predators and such wasted energy can least be afforded. Peacocks grow that huge decorative tail that makes them a much easier catch. A big feature in the mating game has always been screaming "Hey! Look at me! I've got surplus to burn!", the implication being that your children will likely inherit related advantages and/or you will be better able to provide for/defend them,

It's not more important. The Olympics is science, in the sense that we get together periodically to empirically test our understanding of the limits of the (unaltered) human body. The results have practical application. For example: A convict escaped 96 minutes ago from an overturned van. Uninjured, what is the maximum distance he could have travelled? That's science; although someone who double majored in physics is right now spitting at his computer and yelling something about it being as scientific as an etch-a-sketch is to art, but there it is.

Secondly, it's a meaningless comparison: Space exploration tests a very different human quality than the Olympics does. The Olympics tests human physical attributes. Outer space tests human intellectual attributes. In a sense, NASA is our entry into the intellectual Olympics.

But let's be honest: Most of the time, watching science is very boring. It's not a spectator sport -- it's something you do. MythBusters is one of the few examples of where science can be portrayed in a format that is entertaining. Most of the time, it's arduous, painfully slow, occasionally expensive, and often humbling. As well, people don't get excited when the game is over and the announcer says "I don't know." People get very angry when their spectator sport doesn't have a definite outcome. Scientists, on the other hand, get excited by "I don't know." In fact, it's one of the only professions where "I don't know" gets you the respect and admiration of your peers... assuming they have to admit the same.

And you know what, watching bouncing, sweaty boobies, or a beautifully sculped man moving about is okay too. It'd be like me asking you to stop watching Heroes and watch Battlestar Galactica instead. You don't want BSG, you want fucking Heroes. So okay, watch your Heroes, and I'll watch my BSG, and let us both be happy, instead of arguing over which is better.

For many discipline (all?) we already have known for a long time the limit of the human body. We don't test for that anymore. What we test nowadays, are two factors : how far can we push materials to get an advantage, and, to a thankfully lesser extent, how far can we push human modification/doping and get away with it without getting caught.

For many discipline (all?) we already have known for a long time the limit of the human body. We don't test for that anymore.

Yeah, because we all know that, unlike every other form of life on this planet, the human being is not subject to the theory of evolution. Or not [latimes.com]. In fact, the Olympics is a veritable cornucopia of genetic mutations, and it is well worth our time to learn from these athletes; not just their DNA, but training regiments, diet, environment. Every Olympic event unlocks a little bit more understanding of what it means to be human, scientifically, philosophically, and spiritually.

I stopped reading at "unaltered". If you think anyone in the Olympics is "unaltered", you don't understand competitive sports. Having been a fitness professional for well over a decade, I can tell you there are at least 40 different types of performance enhancing drugs (including certain types of steroids) that can not be tested for. Being trained how to fool a lie detector test is also very easy.

Personally, I don't get it. Olypmics doesn't actually test anything other than how obsessive someone can be about one particular thing their entire lives. They contribute nothing to society other than entertaining those with nothing else better to do than to watch others do things most of them could never do in their wildest dreams. Science contributes to our society, Olympics don't.

In all fairness, most of these sports are individualistic and competitive in nature.Sports nor it's audience, is by definition enjoying itself more or socializing more than science and it's audience.I wasn't there at the time, but from what I understand the moonlanding was rather enjoyable and quite a social experience for everybody who watched it.

There’s insanely amazing stuff happening every day. Marvels of human achievement and technology all around us. And for each, there is usually a group of people around it who:

a) lives and breaths the stuffb) can’t fathom why everyone else doesn’t feel the same way

It doesn’t work like this. Even if you could some how identify the one absolute “top of the pile” thing that everyone should be focusing on, it’s completely impractical for everyone to do so. It’s the same reason we can’t have every scientist in the world working on say, cancer research. You need some of them to be trying to figure out how to get rid of wrinkles.

Some people don’t care about space. A lot of people don’t care about space. Arguing that they should care about space because it’s a more “worthy” thing to care about than whatever they do care about is just ridiculous.

As to trying to frame the story so it’s more in-line with the stuff they are interested in... even more ridiculous. You can’t trick someone into caring about technology by turning it into a human interest story.

I generally think having people working on the thing that interests them is important, even if there are better things they could be doing that don't. Mainly for two reasons:

a) Someone working on something they are passionate about is going to achive way more.

b) I tend to subscribe to James Burkes school of thought when it comes to progress. If you haven't read is work (or seen the amazing Connections series) the basic idea is that what drives change is largely unpredictable. Advances in one area lead to ad

It's all part of the Space Nutter religion. Complete disdain for normal human activity, but somehow caring about the entire species getting off this rock. Presumably, the "species" is limited to the Cheetos-dust-covered, basement-dwelling morbidly obese translucently pale worshipers of 1960s Space Age propaganda.

Diplomacy and international politics are also both important for our continued survival. For that matter so is the global economy.

All the science in the world isn't going to help us if we blow ourselves up, or our system of managing resources and man power falls apart. You ask someone who works in either of these areas.. I mean who is really involved.. and they will pretty much parrot _exactly_ what you said, with appropriate fields replaced.

Everyone wants to put their area of interest in a special category. Everyone can make a case that the thing _they_ care about is really the most critical and anyone who doesn't get that just doesn't understand reality.

Mod Parent Up. I have but one lifetime -- and someone out there wants me to spend it all on learning Esperanto.

The older I get, the more I become aware just how much we collectively know -- and how little of it I will have time to learn, apply, and teach others. Rather than follow along in real-time with the Mars story, I'll wait for the uninformed talking heads to move on to some other story because "Mars is old now." I'll read the intelligent executive summary after the research is completed.

People don't care about it because it's not lip-synching an over-produced pop song, it doesn't have actors trying to pawn things, it's not trying to sleep with a housemate, and it doesn't carry crab traps.

What is the value? Did the Olympic Games bring peace like the 6th and 12th Olympic Games? Did the Olympic Games bring happiness like forced evictions or hormone therapy to 'manly' women? How about the massacres and bombs? Or propaganda campaigns?

The Olympic Games are a joke. It is a capitalist system where the richest of the rich can watch elite athletes compete against each other and pretend that they are part of a world community while the local community is beaten into submission. It isn't the world comm

All I have to do is to look back at the battle over broadcasting rights in this city (the rights holder doesn't have a free-to-air channel, and is obliged to broadcast some footage on free channels).

So yes, there's a lot of value in that. And no, I don' t care. I even completely missed the opening ceremony (the only one that I'd care to watch - it's usually a great spectacle) by completely forgetting when it was. If I remember I may try to hunt down a recording from TPB

Please explain the value then. People from seperate countries do things together all the time.

What is different about the Olympics is that people do peaceful things. Unlike some of the other scenarios where people from some of these countries come together.

The Olympics are separated from other international athletic competitions in two primary ways: 1) they're the most commercialized, corrupt, money-driven competition with the greatest focus on advertising and 2) they have a propaganda tradition mostly based on Hitler's contributions to the games. Both of those points are despicable.

I agree with the parent. If you were giving money to hardcore racists every time you purchased a transistor...then yea, I would have a problem with them. Same way I have a problem with people supporting the tyrannical organization that is the IOC. In order to host the Olympics, the host country must pass laws that essentially abolosh all civil rights in any cases where the Olympics are involved. You no longer have any right to free speech (assuming you did before they came...,) you are assumed guilty until proven innocent of any IP violations, they cause forced evictions, violate safety laws for the workers building the Olympic facilities...by supporting the Olympics you are supporting the IOC, and the IOC is just generally a horrible organization.

The metric used is the number of Decayed Missing or Filled Teeth in 12 Year Olds.
England has a mean DMFT of 0.7, and
USA has a mean DMFT of 1.19,
that is the average American 12 Year Old has worse teeth than the average English 12 Year Old.

that is the average American 12 Year Old has worse teeth than the average English 12 Year Old.

But that's not fair.

The average American doesn't care about the average American. Those that earn a decent wage, as long as they don't piss off their employer, can afford private healthcare (unless something goes seriously wrong).

If you took the average 12 year old from a rich family, you'll find the figures are different. The poor don't count in America, they don't want to count. They'll happily vote for thing to cut any aid they already get, in the naive hope that working hard will eventually mean they can afford healthcare and a house in the suburbs.

America is a piss-poor country unless you're rich. The USA spends 17.4% of it's GDP on health care thanks to the "free" market approach. The UK spends 9.8% of it's GDP.

America could easily afford it's own version of the NHS, it would help the poor and unfortunate. It would mean people would spend more time looking after their kids rather than working 2 low-paid jobs to afford their dentist bills. It would also help the middle classes -- it would allow labour mobility. If you lose your job, you don't have to hope to hell that Lisa won't need braces.

American's don't believe in community though, and would rather spend more money on getting less, as long as they think their neighbour isn't getting something for nothing.

It is pretty much the one time the entire planet gets together, to accomplish "something" We compete with countries we are at "war" with in friendly games. It may not be much fun to watch if you arent into the sports that make up the Olympics, I tend to watch the swimming due to my swimming backround but thats about all I personally care about but there is plenty of value in the Olympics, entertainment and otherwise.

Exactly, the Olympics is a story about people achieving, the rover landing is about humanity achieving. Both are worthy to watching. I mean the Olympics is not like the Kardashians, WWE, or any of the other mindless drivel on TV. Not only that but they are not a case of one or the other. The landing will be at 1:31 am which is 5:31 am UTC so unless they the Olympics have events at 5 am you will not have to miss anything but some sleep.In other words STUPID WASTE OF TIME FOR A SLASHDOT STORY. Maybe it would be better to spend time watching the Olympics and the rover landing than posting or reading junk like this.

Exactly, the Olympics is a story about people achieving, the rover landing is about humanity achieving

No. They're both about human achievement. I can't think of anything in modern history that was solely the work of a single person. Even these athletes, as impressive as their performances are, depend on large numbers of people to realize their potential. In this, our race around a rubberized track, and our reach for the stars stem from a universal truth: All human achievement comes from cooperation. We can achieve almost nothing, even our own survival, alone. But together, there is almost no limit to our potential, individually and collectively. This is the message of science, the message we brought with us to the moon, the message left on archaic recordings in the ships we've sent beyond the reach of our own sun.

In other words STUPID WASTE OF TIME FOR A SLASHDOT STORY. Maybe it would be better to spend time watching the Olympics and the rover landing than posting or reading junk like this.

Your time would be better spent thinking less about yourself. Our greatest failing as a people is in the value we place on individuality, to the point where many now compete for limited resources while few live in superfluous abundance. In so doing, our collective and individual potentials both are limited to far less than what we're capable of. If there's a lesson to be learned here, it's that you (and everyone who reads this) needs to spend less time fighting each other, trying to prove themselves right, arguing, and to begin to work together. This requires that we sacrifice our individuality in order to become part of something far greater than ourselves. Of all the subcultures in western society, the scientists and engineers understand and practice this best. Learn from their example.

I am with you. I really won't be too obsessed with the Mars rover because there aren't too many feeds from it. It's scope to the public is limited, unlike the Olympics.

That being said, this is HUGE. The discoveries of this rover will be comparable to the Hubble Telescope (if successful of course) but like HST, it may have some hiccups and upsets; we shall see either way.

People should like what I like not what they like. Only my opinion matters and if you have any interests I don't have then you are wrong and should change that.

How much of an asshole do you have to be to hold an opinion like this? Some people enjoy sports and some people like polishing rocks. The world is a diverse collection of people and just because you might not care for the Olympics doesn't mean its wrong for any one else to do so.

People should like what I like not what they like. Only my opinion matters and if you have any interests I don't have then you are wrong and should change that.

How much of an asshole do you have to be to hold an opinion like this? Some people enjoy sports and some people like polishing rocks. The world is a diverse collection of people and just because you might not care for the Olympics doesn't mean its wrong for any one else to do so.

I do care where my tax dollars go. I would vote zero dollars going to any sport beyond the level of entry level kids sports. It would be a great world where those who vote for more arenas and stadiums get discount tickets to those. But those who vote for more space exploration and science get the vaccines, safer cars, weather forecasts, and get to fly in airplanes built using modern technology.

Since your parent was talking about sports beyond those in school, I really have to wonder about the veracity about your claim. Will less professional stadiums really lead to less fitness in the overall population?

Looking to Europe, they don't have have more stadiums, they have things on the local level, more (free) clubs and to add to that, more consistent sidewalks/bicycle_paths/mass_transit and less of a car culture.

So I have to call bullshit on this claim. Sports for kids are good. But the real money going towards ego-stroking pro-sports so the fans can sit in their chairs and gawk at other people doing things isn't helping anything.

Publicly funded sports y and facilities can be a spur for economic growth...

Nonsense. Commercial sports activitities such as the olympics are entertainment. They are fine for those who choose to expend their own resources on them but funding them with tax money forces people who get no value from them to pay for them and diverts resources away from productive uses. They no more "spur economic growth" than would hiring people to go around smashing windows in order to "create jobs" for glaziers.

Franklin: "Well, the patient is confused, delusional. Unable to separate his natural sense of loyalty for his home team from the reality that they stink, and only got to the playoffs on a technicality."Ramierez: "Yeah, what technicality? The Mars team hit more home runs than any other team on the books!"Franklin: "Only because Martian gravity is 40% less than Earth normal. Alright, the ball travels faster and further skewing the results. Now once they hit Earth gravity, Helen Keller could bat bet

The Olympics can teach us all kinds things about government corruption and inefficiencies. How the IOC is allowed to change the laws of a country ranging from IP to road laws. How the IOC gets a country verging on bankruptcy to spend around 20 billion dollars so that the 1%, the VIPs, and a token handful of us rif-raf can feel important. One the best examples of this is how the VIPs got so many tickets that the stands are half empty for venues that are "Sold out". Another is that the city with some of the worst traffic in the western world created lanes just like they had in Soviet Russia that were limited to well connected people.

All this to watch various countries send their OCD athletes who have nearly destroyed themselves try for a medal.

Bread and circuses.

The only silver lining is that the company that was an inch away from privatizing the police in Britain has humiliated itself to a point where this won't happen. Another study in where a company that can't find its ass with its hands was able to schmooze its way into the corridors of power and milk this single schmoozing skill for billions.

If the money and effort (considering what that many athletes working out for that many hours must also be worth) put into the Olympics were instead were to have been put into science and space exploration we wouldn't be watching a car sized robot touch down on Mars but would be watching the amateur Olympic team representing Mars participate in a scaled down Solar Olympics.

So, if the golf analogy is correct - the rover was launched from earth and, after that, has not made use of any sort of propulsion technology for steering, course correction, or braking? That IS pretty impressive...

I'm a pretty pathetic golfer, but I bet my scores would improve dramatically if I had a team of people steering the ball after I hit it. Getting it to New Zealand might still be a bit of a reach, though.

(The rover is darn cool, seriously. I'm more interested in it than in most of the Olympic events.)

First, as has been said in a couple other posts, being interested in the Mars story and the Olympics are not mutually exclusive. I like space exploration stories, and I like sports. There is no reason to have to pick one over the other unless we are talking career choices. Recreational level interest is a completely different story.

Second, the sports guy in me (exercise physiology degree, and I've coached a college sport) doesn't buy the idea that the accuracy or endurance is more important or impressive in the Mars mission. More impressive endurance based on raw miles is just silly. There wasn't constant acceleration during the whole voyage. Shooting from the hip, I would imagine it was a whole lot more like a lot of initial acceleration and then months of coasting. Similarly the accuracy comparison is almost laughable. Sure, if you just look at the amount of significant digits on what bearing you're hitting a golf ball the comparison is appropriate, but the Mars mission wasn't exactly launched by someone manually adjusting angles with the same amount of fine tuning as someone with sausage fingers playing Angry Birds on an iPhone. Never mind that the Mars mission wasn't likely to have any unexpected external forces altering its trajectory, and it most likely had some means of course correcting in transit.

Beyond those absurdities, it is the standard media treatment of space exploration stories. It's a brief mention of what is happening that leaves more questions about technical details than it answers. Please leave the unnecessary comparison and competition of two noncompeting, unrelated events. Now, if you want to talk about the technological dark ages the NBC executives call home...

...is that golf isn't currently an Olympic sport (but has been added for 2016), and isn't being contested in London this year.

And yes -- sometimes it is these little details that can cause the non-scientists to completely ignore you. Some will feel there isn't much use in hearing your message about space science if you can't even get the details right about what is happening here on Earth.

After the disappointing, and frankly insulting performance put on by Matt Lauer and Meredith Viera (who I watched while growing up as local TV personalities) and the execrable Ryan Seacrest interviewing Michael Phelps instead of showing the 7/7 memorial, and the NOT EVEN 5 MINUTES BETWEEN COMMERCIALS, I'm done with the Olympics for this go-round.

Will these discoveries lead us down a path to confirming life on other planets? Wouldn't that be a good story that might make people care about science?

Actually, I think the possibility of discovering life on other planets is exactly what drives a disappointingly large percentage of the population to *not* care about science. Might mess with their whole world view and all that. Some of them haven't fully accepted the round-earth-orbiting-the-sun thing, life eveloving on other planets would just lead to apoplexy.

Actually, I think the possibility of discovering life on other planets is exactly what drives a disappointingly large percentage of the population to *not* care about science. Might mess with their whole world view and all that. Some of them haven't fully accepted the round-earth-orbiting-the-sun thing, life eveloving on other planets would just lead to apoplexy.

If a person believes God created humanity - why would you think they wouldn't believe that same God is capable of creating life on other planets?

I was more interested in the dry toast I had for breakfast than this orgy of corporate excess they call the "Olympics".

There's nothing going on in London but product placement and exploitation. This is the first Olympics in which I have absolutely no interest. There is nothing in these games about human achievement or "sport" that has not been crushed under a blanket of ad revenue and messed up priorities.

I've seen him. I was sitting at an outdoor cafe enjoying a pint, when I saw someone with a wallet in his hand running, oh, about twice the speed of Ben Johnson, leaving a pair of pursuing cops in the dust. They wouldn't have caught him on motorbikes.

No, wait, fast as he was, he's not the fastest person alive. That would be the trio of Stafford, Young and Ceman. It's amazing that these ~80 year olds hold the record.

I see your point, but there's something to be said for being the pinnacle of human physical fitness.

Pinnacle for a specific purpose/sport/activity perhaps. Track, swimming, gymnastic, archery, etc... fitness (and skills) are not interchangeable. You want to see the pinnacle of human fitness, try something like the US Navy SEALs. [ Any other better examples/. ? ]

Pentathlon?Shooting, fencing, swimming, horse riding (show jumping), track running. Not only that, it is a proper competition, unlike the SEALS who have better equipment and intel than the other side ever will.

"but there's something to be said for being the pinnacle of human physical fitness."

and it should be held in a lower value than the pinnacle of human intelligence. But we all know that intelligence is looked down upon and a useless trait of physical fitness is held up as the ultimate a human can be.

Sorry, I don't need to chase down gazelles for food anymore. Highly physical fit is a useless trait to humanity nowdays.

I imagine you're going to need some fairly fit people to survive a trip to Mars without their bodies failing.

Actually no. That's why this Mars crap is not interesting to me.

If they did it right it would be interesting to me. Example of doing space stuff right: work on building a space station with artificial gravity[1], better radiation shielding.

Once we have that technology working in practical ways it removes the main obstacles to long term human space travel and inhabitation. It would no longer matter so much that it takes months to get to some place in the solar system.

1 - Organized sport has largely supplanted war as a means of getting one over one one's rivals. Imperial pissing contests now involve athletic achievement, not who can build the biggest battleship with the biggest phallic symbol guns. I think humanity has moved on quite a bit in many ways, and organized sport is one tool that has helped.

2 - The opening ceremony of the Olympics gave pride of place to honouring two engineers who changed the world: Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Tim Berners Lee. (If I were directing I would have tried to add Frank Whittle in there, but I'm not griping, I thought it was a powerful show and I found it very moving. Probably helped that I watched the BBC's coverage, anyone who watched it on NBC seemed to complain about it.)

Yes the Curiosity mission is exciting and I'll be following it with great interest. But I'll also be watching sports. Hell I'm even going to watch tomorrow's Formula 1 Grand Prix. It is possible to do two things at once, especially when there's about 7 billion of us.

plus Polaris/The NorthStar now moving in still photos when it was a solid point forever, this is indicative of earth wobble

Polaris has never lined up exactly with the Earth's north pole. And there's a natural precession or "wobble" of the Earth due to it being in orbit around the Sun, that will cause the axis to shift away from Polaris over the years.

It's also now widely known that the earth's magnetic fields weakening and FULL polar shift will occur soon.

The former is known, the latter isn't known, though flipping of the poles will happen sooner or later. There however is no reason to expect pole flips to coincide with most other space phenomena, including potential near passes from high mass objects.

Perhaps because every 3,600 yrs. this bastard passes thru and wipes us out ala Noah's great flood (see that U.S. Naval Map on that note, they're predicting that and they've gone under the seas into the caverns to do so). What's the "trigger"? Niburu/Wormwood kicking off the New Madrid fault.

There's no such evidence of a 3,600 year global flood cycle. And the faults of the world don't create or release water.

And a regular near pass by a large mass (Wikipedia says four times the mass of Earth) w

Not really, most of the major religions already accept evolution. Religion is not a theory, it's a story, they will fit little green men into the plot like they do everything else, some of the smaller churches like Scientology will be delighted and claim it proves them right.